Happy Endings
by CarpeNoctem
Summary: People like them did not get happy endings.


Disclaimer: Don't want, can't have, won't have.

AN: A product of too little sleep and too much melancholy. Feed the demons: REVIEW!

People like them did not get happy endings; it was never in the cards, never woven on the loom, never shown in the stars. Happy endings were too out of reach for people as practical as they were. They dreamed of these endings, though. A white wedding had been ingrained in Hermione's psyche since childhood-another byproduct of the ruffles and dolls that were so eagerly thrust upon her. She rejected the dolls; she was unable to reject the doctrine. There would be a groom: young, smiling, and with eyes like the sea. Her husband would understand her, shield her from hurt, and understand her genius without trying to stifle it. This was the image Hermione would keep in her mind until the end.

He, too, was a closet romantic. How could he not be? Darkness contains a sense of romance, and darkness was a thing he knew all too well. Darkness was Snape's soul, his lover, and the only thing he truly understood. He did not dream of weddings, but of peace; freedom from his guilt and his loneliness. He had no particular picture of the object of his passions- the dreams of the damned can only reach so far, after all.

For years, seven to be exact, the two of them existed in the same space, yet were invisible to each other. She was the annoying know-it-all whose presence was always announced with her frantic hand, he was the Great Bat who hated all he saw. This veneer was all they saw of one another, and neither one attempted to look deeper. But Fate, they say, is a bitch. Their careful perceptions of each other were shattered one dreary autumn night at the headquarters of the illustrious Order of the Phoenix.

Snape had stumbled through the half-open doorway; blood in his hair and on his hands. But this gore was not what shocked Hermione the most. His eyes, his dark eyes that had always been filled with snapping rage or well-concealed contempt, were completely empty. She had caught him as he fell, supporting his tall frame despite his pain-filled attempts to push her away. He finally fell silent and watched her closely when she helped him take of his shirt, which was made even blacker by the bloodstains adorning it. He was suddenly struck with the notion that he didn't know this young woman at all.

This belief was all the more strengthened when Hermione, hands shaking slightly as she did so, very gently pressed her lips to his. To his utter surprise, Snape kissed her back. She was the first to tear away, blushed as red as the blood on his forehead, and dashed up the staircase, even then remembering to skip over the trick step.

It was awkward between them for a long while; Snape did not want to admit his absurd attraction to a girl nearly half his age, an attraction no doubt born out of desperation, and Hermione was too embarrassed to meet his eyes. The next time he jolted through the doorway, she touched him more gingerly. This time, it was he who initiated the kiss.

Time passed quickly from then on. They argued, seethed at each other, kissed passionately and desperately in the shadows, and finally, one rainy January night, became one. Their relationship was the only light either of them had; Snape danced with the devil every night and Hermione frantically battled the passage of time with her books and her equations. They were secret, so secret that no one ever knew that the former Gryffindor and her Potions Professor were carrying on an affair in the midst of the most violent conflict the wizarding world had ever seen.

They had their glimpses of happiness, yes, but this happiness never lingered. Hermione always saw the image of her groom, youthful and lovely on her bright wedding day. She could never quite reconcile her current relationship with that image, even though her feelings towards Snape soon blossomed into a tentative love. Snape's dream lover still did not have a face, and this disturbed him more then he would ever admit too, even as he clasped the woman he loved to him.

The Final Battle came at last, even as the optimists pushed it back as much as they could. It was brutal and quick. Souls were extinguished with a flash of green fairy-light and the empty husks hit the trampled earth with the finality of the death. Amidst the despair, good finally triumphed; Harry Potter, Savior of the Wizarding World and official Boy-Wonder, emerged from his duel with Satan's emissary relatively unscathed, a brilliant smile lighting up the field even as the sun peeked timidly over the horizon.

The Order of the Phoenix lived up to its name; it rose from the ashes of the crimson battlefield, once again slowly gathering strength. Its members, however, did not. The fallen were buried on a day that was too sunny for its own good, and every birdsong was a horrible mockery. The graves went in alphabetical order, with one exception. Snape and Hermione were buried next to one another out of pure chance-the results of having a barely literate half-giant help with the burials.

Spring went about its business, as it has done since the beginning of time, and eventually, various plants began to grow upon the darkened mounds. McGonagall received dandelions, Dumbledore's resting place gathered lilies, and so on. But between the graves of Snape and Hermione there grew one of nature's crowning achievements. Shooting up almost overnight, towering over the shoots of the other graves, there grew a strange flower. It had a dark green stem, with tiny reddish leaves protruding, and at the top of this evergreen base there were brilliant crimson petals, silky soft with tiny green veins that were visible only when closely looked at.

Most claimed that this flower was a symbol of the battle itself; out of the blood of the battlefield, peace that was new and green would grow. Few knew what that flower truly was-the only public sign of the relationship between a Gryffindor and a Slytherin, the most beautiful thing that could have ever grown out of their love. Who knows; maybe the two closet romantics got their happy ending after all.


End file.
